Cuban madoros

[Daize]

Right I have had a rather disappointing experience with the ageing of the various cuban maduro wrapper type cigars I have had in my collection and was wondering if others have had a similar experience.

I have found that over time all my maduro wrapped cubans have lost alot of their complexity over time and have become rather boring cigars rather quickly. The following cigars is where I have found this to happen :

Cohiba Genios : When I first smoked these out of the box, I thought these were the best cigars ever. Over about a couple of years though, I found them to steadily become a rather boring smoke with few of the subtleties and complexities from before. It became a rather flat smoke for me.

MC Sublimes EL 2008: Same deal as the Genios. They just sorta flattened out to a point where they just were not anything special anymore.

Upmann Mag 48 EL 2009: Slightly different here. The spice has taken over for me, it has become a little powerful spice bomb with really not much else to say for itself.

All these cigars I absolutely adored when I first got them. All have in common a maduro type wrapper (it seems almost all the ELs are maduros). And all, without exception, lost most of the complexity they had to start with and aged very poorly.

Now it may be my humidor, but I have not had this experience with any of my non-maduro cubans, some of which I have been smoking for just as long or longer. I was wondering if this was just me... maybe the maduros just require higher humidity (I keep all my cigars at 65ish RH)

Have any of you had a similar experience with cuban maduros ?

bah sorry about the spelling in the title, can't seem to edit it :/

[monkey66]

There is a school of thought that would sat that a Maduro (already aged) cigar would need lower RH ageing (say 60%) as there has already been considrable fermenting of some of the leaves.

For me the Genios took 3 years before it came good and now I wish I had more of my 08 box left. I havent sampled a Subllime since their release so can't comment. Love the Mag48 and don't have a bad word.

I do think that regular stock are probably a better bet for long-term (5 years plus) ageing though. A good D4/P2/HU No2/Monte2/RASS/BBF/BRC etc with 5-10 years of careful ageing can be a magical thing. Also we have to remember that this is a game of years, sometimes decades so with the Monte Sublime we cannot judge absolutely, just how it is performing at the moment, in another 3-5 years it may be great again.

If you are not happy with how some of your sticks are smoking, leave them for a year or two and then try again.

[Daize]

ya I won't buy any more mag 48s as I was planning to, but I will leave the few I have left to rest for some. I am just tempted to leave off the LEs and Maduros in general though as they are more expensive and seem not to be very consistent over time.